Google on Thursday unveiled its first-generation desktop application for searching through personal files on the PC and through a person's Web history, a move that could shake up the landscape of Internet search and raise privacy hackles.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which will report earnings for the first time as a public company next week, has created Google Desktop Search, a thin-client application that lets people retrieve e-mail, office documents, AOL chat logs and a history of Web pages previously viewed, all via the Web browser. "It's like photographic memory for your computer--if you've seen it before, you should be able to find it," said Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products at Google.